An often-seen and often-harmful media mistake comes from premature reporting of someone’s death. But, in most cases where that error shows up, it’s about a particular media outlet jumping the gun based on a source or sources with inaccurate information. It’s rarer to see a team, usually an official source of accurate information, make that mistake. But that’s what Alabama A&M did Wednesday, announcing that linebacker Medrick Burnett Jr. (who has been hospitalized since suffering a head injury in an Oct. 26 game) had passed away before correcting hours later that he remains alive (while spelling his name wrong in that correction).
Statement from Athletics
We retract the news of the passing of Medrick Burnette Jr, that was originally advised by an immediate family member on Tuesday evening. Our staff acted accordingly to the wishes of the family member to inform the A&M community and beyond of
— Alabama A&M Athletics (@_AAMUAthletics) November 27, 2024
joy in knowing that Medrick remains in stable condition.
— Alabama A&M Athletics (@_AAMUAthletics) November 27, 2024
It’s understandable why Alabama A&M made this mistake, as an immediate family member would seem to be a reliable source. But they clearly weren’t in this case. And it’s worth noting that the GoFundMe page for Burnett, helmed by his sister Dominece James, didn’t make this announcement. The latest update there Wednesday was that “he is having a tough time but we are holding on til the very end.” So this wasn’t going off information that the family had provided publicly, but rather one family member’s comments to someone in the A&M athletics department.
And while it was reasonable for that athletics department to pass this information on to their community and beyond as per the family member’s wishes, that led to a lot of wider problems. This false information was highly spread around media outlets Wednesday night thanks to it coming from such an official source, and it also really took off on social media. And while most media outlets quickly corrected, that wasn’t the case for everyone on social media, or for social media services’ algorithms and indexing. Indeed, an X search Thursday morning produced two top posts indicating Burnett had indeed died before any post with the updated information.
This is far from the first case of a false death report. (And that’s even before consideration of other death reporting errors, such as getting the death accurate but the circumstances wildly wrong.) But this one stands out for the school’s role in spreading the false information. And it’s another warning about the importance of taking extreme care with reporting on deaths.
It’s hard to blame media outlets or social media users who relayed or commented on the news here with it coming from such an official source as the school. And the prompt corrections from many when the new information came out are appreciated. But not everyone did correct this in a prompt manner, and the current fragmented state of the media universe means that the false information’s still showing up first for many, including on X. So this did go quite wrong, even if the reasons why it did are understandable. And it’s maybe a point in favor of skepticism of even some seemingly-official sources.
[The Associated Press; images from Light On Sports and Nick P. Kuzma on X]
